


Shane & Ryan Attend A Furry Convention • Weird Wonderful World

by breathtaken



Category: Watcher Entertainment RPF
Genre: Episode Style, Furry, Gen, Weird and/or Wonderful World, furry convention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-31
Updated: 2020-08-31
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:07:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26101645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/breathtaken/pseuds/breathtaken
Summary: SHANE: The world is weird!RYAN: And/or wonderful!SHANE: And I’m taking my curious little pal Ryan Bergara around to explore every last bit of it!RYAN: Hey, where are we?SHANE: We’re at theFurther Confusionfurry convention in San Jose, California!
Relationships: Ryan Bergara & Shane Madej
Comments: 22
Kudos: 39
Collections: Weird And/Or Wonderful World: The Lost Season





	Shane & Ryan Attend A Furry Convention • Weird Wonderful World

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to the wonderful [Jess](www.archiveofourown.org/users/sequence_fairy) for beta reading!

When Shane first sat down to plan this episode, he had a vision for the opening shot that came to him with unusual clarity: him and Ryan, emerging from two opposite rooms in their animal costumes, like a couple on their wedding day seeing each other for the first time. 

It’s taken a lot of work to pull it off – from using Brittney as a go-between to plan their themed suits, order them and receive delivery of them without ever seeing each other’s, not to mention getting up at six am the day after the five-hour drive to San Jose, so that they can use these rooms before the con staff need them – but Shane’s pretty sure it’s gonna be worth it.

Brittney’s in here with him, helping him get his mic and earpiece in place under his suit, so that he and Ryan can get some good audio and actually communicate with the outside world. He can still barely see anything when he puts the head of the costume on, with just a mesh grille over the eyes to look through, but he supposes one out of two ain’t bad. In the other room, Matty’s doing the same for Ryan, with Mark and TJ set up in the corridor, ready to capture the moment. 

They test the audio, confirm they can all hear each other, and then TJ counts them down from five, and on zero, they both open their doors and step out into the hall – where Ryan takes one look at Shane, and immediately starts laughing so hard he has to lean over and brace his hands on his thighs.

Shane’s laughing too, of course, because they may have planned this around a known theme, but actually _seeing_ it is something else entirely. His own costume – _fursona,_ he corrects mentally – is good, but Ryan’s is even _better,_ from the delicate mesh butterfly wings to the actually-glowing red eyes, to the fuzzy little antennae. Shane wants to twang them, so he steps forward and does just that.

“Jesus Christ, man!” Ryan exclaims, even louder in Shane’s ear than his laughter was, and Shane’s glad that with the suit on nobody can see him flinch. He’ll have to ask TJ to turn Ryan down after this. In the earpieces, or maybe just in general. “Lay off the goods, okay!”

“Come on, then, give us a little twirl,” Shane says, through his own laughter, and Ryan obliges, putting one hand on his hip and grabbing Shane’s hand with the other, holding it high above his head – and because Shane may be tall but he isn’t the rubber man, Ryan gets no more than a quarter-turn before his wings crash into Shane’s back.

“Stop, stop,” Shane wheezes, letting go and stepping away before Ryan pulls his own wings off or something, and sucking in air. Breathing is not exactly easy in this giant foam head. “That’s really not gonna work with your wingspan, buddy.”

“Do the twirl again!” Brittney calls out, clearly suppressing laughter of her own.

Shane gives her a thumbs up, turns back to Ryan, and repeats, “Give us a little twirl.”

This time Ryan holds his own hand above his head, miming a partner spinning him, and Shane manages to stay out of the way of the wings, though he’s starting to realize how truly terrible his depth perception is in this suit.

“Am I lookin’ sexy? I’m feelin’ sexy,” he says, because he is a terrible person who’s figured out that Shane never knows how to respond to those kinds of comments, and uses it against him at any possible opportunity.

After a second he manages, “The statue’s got better buns,” which by his standards is positively un-flummoxed.

“Well, you’d have to be looking to know that,” Ryan replies immediately, and turns to look straight into the camera, with enough ham that Shane thinks it’ll work in the edit even without a facial expression.

“Okay.” Thirty seconds in, and they’re already off the rails. Even though he wishes Ryan would, y’know, never imply that Shane’s been looking at his ass again in _any_ context, he can’t deny the fans are gonna – what do the kids say these days – _go feral._ “Let’s – okay.”

“Bigfoot got your tongue, big guy?” Ryan barely even pauses for breath. “Talking of. Looks to me like I’m not the only one who’s had a glow-up!”

“I’ve been hitting the gym, baby!” Shane exclaims, and flexes obligingly as Ryan reaches out and gropes the suit’s ridiculous bulging biceps, which are only slightly more ridiculous than Ryan’s own ridiculous bulging biceps, and follows it up with the classic Shane Madej Bigfoot Call for good measure.

Which of course Ryan responds to with his Mothman call, and they go back and forth until Ryan’s laughing with his whole body and Shane can practically _feel_ TJ’s rolling eyes. 

“Alright, let’s do the intro,” he manages, and turns to the camera, stepping in front of Ryan’s wing so that it’s framing them both, like a cryptid hug. 

“The world is weird!”

“And/or wonderful!”

* * *

They have an hour allotted to them to film on the main convention floor. Shane thought an hour was positively luxurious, by the standards of some of their other shows, but it quickly becomes clear that their handler, a woman named Yin who has a giant fluffy skunk tail attached to the back of her shorts and manages to be simultaneously friendly and intimidating, is tightly managing them. Every time they show the beginnings of interest in one of the booths, she leads Brittney over first and confers with the vendor for thirty seconds to make sure they actually want to be filmed before he and Ryan are even allowed to step over there. Not that Shane would ever want to force anyone to be in their show who didn’t want to be, but it does kill the spontaneity a little bit.

Though they’re professionals, of course, and at least with these suits on, they don’t have to worry about moderating their facial expressions. Which is for the best, because Matty and Mark both have matching cat ear headbands poking out above their cameras, a fact which Shane keeps forgetting until every time he looks at one of them. (Brittney too, but on Brittney it actually works.)

He’s letting Ryan lead him around the floor and pick out the things that catch his eye, though if Ryan has anything like the visibility Shane has inside his own suit then he’s probably just picking booths at random; Shane’s walking a step behind him, making sure he doesn’t demolish anything with his giant cryptid wings. The art they look at is all very impressive, ranging from cartoon to Japanese anime to more traditional fantasy styles that Shane recognizes from his D&D handbooks, and he asks all the artists they meet a couple of questions, how long they’ve been drawing and how they started out, and a bit about their style.

He asks Red, a tall, pale person of indeterminate gender with fire-hydrant hair that explains the name, “So we’ve been to a few booths so far and we’ve seen a lot of really great art here. How important would you say art is to the furry community?”

Red’s expression lights up. “Oh, it’s absolutely central. The community formed around art, from Disney movies to comics to the first anime and manga that was imported to America. And almost everyone creates their own fursona, and then you want to have an image of that fursona. So while I do sell finished pieces of art, the meat of my work is commissions, and all this is more of an advertisement of my own style.”

“Do you have an image of your fursona that we can look at?”

“Sure!” Red turns behind themselves and points to one of the pictures on the wall of the booth, gesturing for them to step around the table so they can see more closely. “This is Red. I actually just re-drew them a couple weeks ago.”

Shane gives Matty a couple seconds to get an unobstructed shot before peering in at the drawing of a red dragon, in a style that to Shane’s uneducated eyes is halfway between cartoonish and realistic, with bold black outlines and intricate scale detailing.

“Wow!” Ryan exclaims, and Shane says, “That’s really beautiful. I love the shading,” and hopes he doesn’t sound like too much of an idiot who knows nothing about art.

They see a whole range of artists, booths selling badges and lanyards and various con souvenirs, as well as getting a chance to meet Kelly, a bubbly woman with a big smile who made his and Ryan’s fursuits, and pose for pictures. The two of them are almost the only people they see walking around the convention floor in full suits: most people are wearing regular clothes, with a few, like Yin, only sporting accessories, like ears or a tail. Kelly explains to them that for most people, the suits are too hot and inconvenient to wear all day, and attendees tend to just put them on for specific events and for the fursuit parade.

“We’ll be checking that out later,” Shane tells Ryan, and conscious of the fact that he has absolutely no facial expression, gives him a cheesy thumbs up that Ryan responds to a moment later with finger guns, before cracking up.

“Alright, guys,” Brittney says, nudging them towards the door. “Time to rehydrate! Mark, Matty and TJ are gonna stay with Yin and get some ambient and B-roll, and we’ll meet them in twenty minutes.”

They’ve managed to book a room in the convention center itself, which Shane gathers is practically gold dust, and he flops down on one of the beds beside Ryan as Brittney takes the desk chair, letting out a grateful exhale as he pulls off the head of his suit and rests it on his stomach.

“There’s sweat in my _hair._ ” Ryan pulls a disgusted face as he runs his hand through. “This is worse than roller derby.”

“In pure heat terms, yes, but I’m also less likely to break something.” Shane reaches for the pre-opened water bottle that Brittney’s holding out to him and takes a long swig, immediately regretting his words as he remembers what they’ve got planned for the afternoon.

“Please tell me we don’t have to wear these all day.”

“You can actually take the suits off for the next couple hours,” Brittney tells Ryan, as he groans in relief. “You’ve got a workshop and a panel to attend before lunch, and then the interviews after. But you’re gonna be suited up again for some of the main events later this afternoon.” Shane winks at her, mainly because he knows it annoys Ryan to be the only one who’s not in the know.

Ryan just rolls his eyes, then reaches out his hand and pokes Bigfoot’s nose, tracing his fingers over the simian features. “This is pretty great, huh.”

“So’s yours. I love his fuzzy little antennae.”

“How much do these things even cost?”

“Shh,” Shane chides. “We’re supporting independent artists. You can’t put a price on art.”

* * *

Speaking of art, their workshop is animal drawing for beginners, which he and Ryan definitely are. He’s not expecting they’ll be any good at it, but art is so central to the community that it was the obvious pick, and hopefully it’ll be funny to watch them struggle. They meet back up with Yin, who sits them at their own table in the front far corner of the room, before taking Mark and Matty over to confer with the workshop leader about the filming. 

Shane grabs some paper and a few pencils from the pile in the center of the table as Ryan asks, “What do you want us to draw? Our cryptid-sonas?”

“Yeah, I think so. Unless there’s something else you wanted to do.” He’s curious, and he supposes there’s no better time to ask, “What do you think you’d choose?” When Ryan looks at him in surprise, he hastily jokes, “Golden Retriever?”

“Fuck you, dude.”

“No – a corgi, or a doxie. Something with little legs.”

After five years, it’s all too easy to wind Ryan up. Though to be fair, it was already easy after five minutes.

“Not everything has to be a height joke, you know. You’d be a bird. ‘Cause you’re a weird bird man.”

“I am a weird bird man.”

“One with spindly long legs. Bone stilts,” Ryan announces, apparently having forgotten how he just said ten seconds ago that not everything has to be a height joke.

Shane decides not to give him the satisfaction of recognizing the callback. “A wader bird. I could vibe with that.”

As Matty and Mark walk back over to them, he decides, “We’re probably gonna use like, two minutes of footage from this, tops. Let’s just draw our cryptids, so we don’t have to explain it in VO. And so our audience can laugh about how much we suck at drawing.”

With a little help from Scout, the workshop leader, their cryptid drawings turn out at least recognizable, though in Ryan’s case that’s mainly because Mothman has so many recognizable features to begin with – he clearly is not a natural artist. Shane’s own drawing actually isn’t even half bad, and he allows himself a moment of quiet pride before they leave to set up for the panel they’re attending, _What is the Furry Fandom?_

Mark films the whole lecture, which will be an obscene amount of footage to comb through for the few key talking points; Shane thinks they’ve hit a lot of what they need within the first minute, when the presenter defines furry very succinctly as ‘animals doing people things’. Matty’s sat beside them, filming their reactions, so Shane tries to make a variety of subtly-different variations on his listening-intently face; of course, Ryan notices what he’s doing and starts impersonating him, and it quickly devolves into farce, until Brittney has to lean around Matty and poke Ryan in the arm until they stop giggling silently and get their shit together again. 

They are professionals, after all, for some value of the term.

* * *

They break for lunch, then set up in the small conference room set aside for their interviews. They’re wearing the suit bodies again, mainly because the sight of Ryan trying to sit in a chair with the giant mesh wings is absolutely fucking hilarious, and Brittney manages to wrangle two plinths from the hotel staff so that Ryan and Shane can have the heads of the suits displayed behind them as they chat to their interviewees. 

Their first interview is with Mushu, who introduces himself by showing them the large lanyard around his neck, with a drawing of his husky fursona. “Most of us can’t afford a suit, or we don’t wanna spend that kinda money. I’m not really into the whole costuming thing, but I want people to see me for who I am,” he explains. There’s a slightly ironic grin on his face, but Shane can tell he means it. 

Mushu is initially a bit reserved, and Shane wonders for the first half a minute if Yin’s made the right choice for them here, and this is gonna be a difficult interview; but as soon as he gets onto talking about the fandom, Mushu’s surprisingly forthcoming. He doesn’t just tell them all about the importance of LGBT community in the fandom in general, but segues neatly into his own experience of experimenting with gender by roleplaying as his fursona, and how it gave him the courage to then transition in real life, without a hint of hesitance. It’s a really touching, human story, and one that Shane thinks their audience will jive with. 

Their second interview is with Dariona, the convention chair, who rushes into the room looking as harried as Mushu was self-possessed, turning off her radio and tucking flyaway hairs behind her ears as she does, and Shane recognizes the look of someone who’s trying to make a lot of moving parts come together all at once, and wishes there were a few less of them. 

He gets right down to business, aware that she’s only got twenty minutes for them, starting with a few softballs about how long the convention’s been running, how she got involved, before he gets to the first chewy one.

“Now, a lot of people outside of the community think this is all, y’know, sexy stuff,” he starts, and sees the _here-we-go_ expression on her face, even though he can’t imagine she was expecting him not to ask it. “But that’s really not the kind of experience we’ve had today.” 

“Sure. We’re a sex-positive community, but we’re not _about_ sex,” Dariona replies, smoothly enough that he’s sure she’s given this exact answer many times before. “The convention as a whole and most of the activities are suitable for all ages, we have people who like to bring their families, and we also have some activities aimed specifically at children.”

“As I’m sure everyone knows by now, I’m a massive Disney fan,” Ryan picks up; when Shane looks over at him, he’s leaning forward in his seat. “I would have thought this was _so cool_ as a kid, being able to dress up as my favorite animal and draw pictures and all that sort of thing.”

“Exactly. For most of us, furry begins in childhood, when we watch movies or consume other anthropomorphic media. And where we differ from mainstream society is, we reject the idea that growing up means you have to abandon everything you loved as a kid.” 

Ryan’s nodding, engaged, and though he may have laughed and looked decidedly unconvinced when Shane first told him what they were doing for this episode, Shane’s glad to see his instincts being proved right in real time. “That’s actually been a really big part of becoming comfortable with who I am as an adult. Embracing my weird interests, and that it’s okay to be a grown man who loves Disney and Paddington Bear, and that I don’t have to like, throw all that out.”

He’s looking dangerously earnest, so Shane cuts in to say, “We love Ryan _because_ he’s a big weirdo, not despite it.”

Dariona laughs. “That’s exactly it. And as for the ‘sexy stuff’, as you put it – it’s important to us to strike a balance between keeping the convention welcoming for everybody, while making sure we don’t stigmatize the community members for whom furry _is_ a part of their sexuality. So we have some age-restricted panels on more adult topics, and then of course, what people do in their private spaces is their own business.”

That speaks for itself, Shane decides, so he leaves a couple of seconds of dead air before asking, “So, can we ask about your story? How you discovered the community.”

“Sure! Well, as a kid I was _obsessed_ with _The Lion King,_ ” she replies, which makes sense, given the fluffy-tipped tail curling up behind her, arranged carefully against the back of her chair. “I used to watch it every single day when I got home from school, and I’d play lions with my little sister, and I always insisted on being Nala. I thought that when I grew up I was gonna marry Simba,” she says – and Ryan lets out a sudden gasp.

“I wanted to marry Nala,” he exclaims. “Oh my God, am I a furry?!”

Shane can’t help it. He corpses.

“Fuck you!” Ryan says, swatting him on the arm, and this is _perfect,_ Ryan’s wide-eyed surprise is even better than Shane could have hoped for.

Dariona grins and says, “Only if you wanna be!”, and Shane concentrates on trying to die silently so as not to cut across her audio. “So I was always into cartoons – are you okay?”

“Yes, sorry. Just a sec.” Shane wipes his eyes, and takes a few heaving breaths until he has himself back under control, and Ryan’s stopped giggling self-consciously beside him. “Okay. Would you mind counting to three and then starting that sentence again, please?”

“Sure. So I was always heavily into cartoons, then in high school I got into Japanese anime and manga, and then I got into cosplay, and then I went to an anime con that had like a furry corner, and it all just came full circle.”

“And what does your fursona mean to you?”

“I’d say that Dariona is my best self, or she’s the self I wanted to be. She’s been with me since high school. I was bullied at school and I didn’t have many friends, and I was scared to stand up for myself. But when I was her, I could be brave, like a lion. And pretending to be her was what gave me the courage to be myself. To go to college, and to get involved in convention leadership, and to believe I could lead other people.”

“We assign human qualities to animals in a lot of different cultures, don’t we?”

“Absolutely. Almost all cultures have traditional animal stories, and sociologists actually consider it an innate part of human psychology.”

“A lot of cultures have traditional cryptid stories, too,” Ryan chips in. “Cautionary tales.”

“Yeah, absolutely. So they’re two halves of the same coin.”

Shane jokes, “They’re not bad, they’re just misunderstood.”

Dariona has to leave them a few minutes later – “Places to be, people to wrangle,” she jokes – but Shane’s pretty pleased, they’ve hit all the major points on the FAQ and it’ll make some good footage. 

When he gets up, he bursts out laughing to see Ryan has put Shane’s Bigfoot head on. It looks ridiculous with his Mothman body. 

“You feeling alright, Ry? You’re looking a bit pale.”

“I don’t know what’s up, but I’m really craving a banana,” Ryan replies, in what Shane thinks is supposed to be his Bigfoot voice, before taking the head off and handing it back to Shane, and picking up his own. “You have the world’s biggest head, dude. I could fit a minibar in there with me.”

Shane cuffs him gently on the Mothman head he’s holding in his arms. “Come on, wise guy. We’ve got a mystery event to get to.”

* * *

The ‘mystery event’ is in the large conference room, and all Shane’s told Ryan is that fursuits are required for participants. As Yin walks them over, he can feel Ryan practically vibrating with curiosity.

The room is – as the name promises – large, with about fifty people in fursuits milling around in the center plus an audience in regular clothes lining the two longest walls, and an as-yet-empty stage as the far end.

“If this is karaoke, then we’re gonna kill it,” Ryan says; inside his suit, Shane grins.

If he does say so himself, this is probably gonna be the real high point of the episode. 

They have to wait for a few minutes for the actual event to start, and Mark gets in position to film the stage as Matty shoots Shane and Ryan introducing themselves to the other participants, shaking a few hands and giving a few high fives. They’re wearing a mixture of full suits, and fursuit heads, hands, feet and tails combined with regular clothes, which seems to Shane like a much less sweaty alternative that he would have liked for himself, if he wasn’t busy representing North America’s favorite cryptid.

Suddenly a voice comes on the mic and announces, “Hello and welcome to the Furlympics!”

“The _what?_ ” Shane hears Ryan say distinctly through the earpiece, as they turn towards the stage and see a short-haired woman in a striped referee shirt and shorts with rounded cat ears and a spotted tail, the radio clipped to her belt marking her out as one of the con staff. “Oh my God, what is happening!”

“I’m Moira Leopard, and I’ll be your head referee today! You’ll be competing in twenty teams of two for the title of Best in Show, so I hope you’re all warmed up!” she calls out, as around them their fellow contestants start doing exaggerated stretches. Never one to be outdone, Ryan drops into a deep lunge, that immediately has him letting out an _oof_ which makes Shane wheeze, himself sticking to a few half-assed arm circles in the knowledge that none of their viewers expect him to show any meaningful athletic prowess.

“Now, raise your teamie’s hand.”

Shane grabs Ryan’s hand and holds it up, ignoring his muttered, “Just yank it outta my socket, why don’t you.” 

“Our first event is the Balloon Relay. We’re gonna put you into four groups of ten, and one of each pair is gonna get a balloon. We’re gonna tie it around one of your waists, and then you need to find your group with the same color as you.” 

When a referee comes up to them with a red balloon, Ryan says, “Arms up, big guy,” and when Shane just looks at him, “Well, it won’t fit around my wings, now will it?”

He has a point, Shane concedes, and lets the referee tie a red balloon on a string around his waist; and then listens in growing dismay as Moira explains they’re doing a relay race, but in pairs, and one half of the pair has to pop the other’s balloon without using their hands. Which means him and Ryan in all manner of embarrassing physical situations, which Shane knew intellectually was kinda the point of this segment, but actually having to go through with it is something else entirely.

They offer to go first in their group and shove the way to the front of the line, which Shane thinks is the best strategy because it means they’ll at least get it over with, until the air horn blows and they’re running across the room together – then Ryan grabs Shane around the waist and basically body-slams him, which only succeeds in knocking the wind out of him and has zero effect on the balloon – and Shane lets out a _woosh_ of air, realizing too late that they should actually have gone last so they could have learned from everyone else what works.

“Get on the floor.”

“What?”

“On the floor,” Ryan repeats, and Shane should really say something funny but he’s too busy trying to breathe, and he knows what kind of a monster Ryan turns into when he gets competitive. 

So he flops down onto the ground, smushing his face against the inside of the head, and the balloon against his stomach, as Ryan sits on his ass and rolls around, trying to pop it with their combined body weight, and Shane says goodbye to any possible shreds of dignity that may have remained after five years working with Ryan.

The other events are a little better, but not by much: Shane loses a mini-game of Capture the Flag to a red panda with a well-timed baseball slide; their differing heights combined with Ryan’s Mothman wings make the three-legged race an absolute disaster; and the single upside to the wheelbarrow race is that they both agree immediately that Ryan should be the wheelbarrow. 

After an exhausting game that involves crossing the room without touching the floor, using only a couple wooden planks and upturned buckets, Shane’s about ready to just lie down and not get up again. At least the organizers have allowed ample time for rest and water breaks between events, because they’re in serious need of them; Shane feels like every inch of him’s sweating, he’s gone through two full bottles of water already, and he’s sure the audio from the last thirty minutes must be borderline unusable. He can feel the chill of the AC when he takes the head of his suit off, but faced with forty sweaty fursuiters exerting themselves, it sure is having its work cut out for it.

Beside him, Ryan’s pouring a handful of water on the back of his neck, letting out a ridiculous high-pitched squeal and apparently not caring when it drips into the neck of his suit; Shane hopes his mic pack is spared. “I really hope you planned in some time for a shower after this, ‘cause I don’t even sweat this much at the gym.”

“We’ve got an hour free after this, fortunately. ‘Cause I am not holding up so well.” When Ryan grins at him with all his teeth, Shane adds, “I hate to break it to ya, bud, but we may not win this one.”

“Oh _shit,_ ” Ryan says, looking past him – and Shane turns to see the referees setting up a whole-ass obstacle course: he spots tires, a hula hoop, something he thinks they’re supposed to jump over, a few buckets, a pile of bean bags, and to top it all off, a _limbo pole,_ which between Shane’s height and Ryan’s wingspan, is gonna be a _clusterfuck._

“Oh, no,” he agrees.

Somehow, they don’t come in last overall, despite Shane falling on his ass during the limbo and Ryan not fitting between the supporting poles at all. Shane decides he’s happy to take it and call it a victory, he just wants to get out of the freakin’ suit.

They’re awarded a participation certificate, and hold it up for the camera, still heavy-breathing. Shane just knows their wonderful editor is gonna take whatever the worst audio was from this bit and stick it over top of this moment. How he suffers for his art, huh.

* * *

After the intensity that was the Furlympics, the fursuit parade is actually pretty chill: they still have to wear their suits but are at least freshly-showered, and all they have to do is walk around the convention center for fifteen minutes in a parade of other fursuiters, to the sound of some peppy marching band music, with Matty and Mark filming them from either side and Brittney and Yin spotting them to make sure they don’t walk into anybody, and TJ off to the side somewhere to get some clear sound. Shane decides he’s gonna put some quirky VO over this bit.

Ryan grabs Shane’s hand and holds it up triumphantly, then they give royal waves to the crowd until Shane’s wrist starts to hurt. It’s been a long day and he’s tired, thirsty and getting hungry to boot, and they still have to film an outro before he can finally shove some pizza in his face, but he thinks this episode is gonna be a banger. Clickbaity enough to draw the numbers, but with the human heart shining through it throughout.

* * *

It’s nearly an hour later by the time they film the outro, after getting changed yet again and scoffing two packets of chips plus a packet of peanuts from one of the hotel vending machines. They’re in a roped-off corner of the bar, with a worrying amount of ambient noise behind them; Yin and Brittney have the not-enviable job of going around to everyone else in the bar and asking them to keep it down for the next fifteen minutes so that they can actually get some usable shots.

They’re sitting at a small, round table together, dressed in their normal clothes again, with the exception of two furry hands poking out of their jacket sleeves and wrapped around their beers.

“So, buddy,” Shane asks to kick them off, “Did you have a weird and/or wonderful time?”

“Well, today was actually not as weird as I was expecting,” Ryan replies thoughtfully; he’s hamming it up a little for the camera, but Shane can tell he means it. “Like, I thought I wasn’t gonna get it at all, but I’ve had a great time.”

“We’ve met a lot of great people, and they’ve told us all about their passion. It was a lot of fun,” Shane agrees, and, “Looks like you’ve found your people.”

“Yep, that’s me,” Ryan says gamely, looking into the camera. “Ryan Bergara, certified furry.”

Shane already knows what the edit on that one’s gonna look like.

“Though I could do without you ever sitting on me while I’m wearing a full-body suit again.”

Still looking at the camera, Ryan gives a deliberately creepy grin. “No accounting for taste, huh.”

“Okay.” Shane wheezes, feeling himself turn red. He probably should have known better than to set Ryan up for that one, he thinks, before immediately correcting himself; if he’s honest, he’s always gonna gonna make the setup, just to see what Ryan will volley back at him. It’s why they work so well together. “I think we’re done here.”

“Here’s to a _furry_ good adventure with my best pal,” Ryan says, holding up his glass with his furry hand; and Shane rolls his eyes, but lifts his own glass up to meet it, until they clink.

They hold the moment in a comedy freeze frame, and Shane counts six before Ryan deliberately licks his lips, still staring at Shane, and a moment later they both crack up laughing.

“Alright, let’s cut,” Shane says with a grin, and takes a long sip of his beer.

**Author's Note:**

> #### Episode Credits
> 
> • Hosts: Ryan Bergara, Shane Madej  
> • Featuring: Red, Mushu, Dariona  
> • Production Coordinator: Brittney Lee  
> • Camera Operators: Mark Celestino, Matt Real  
> • Sound Mixer: TJ Marchbank
> 
> #### References
> 
> • [Further Confusion](https://www.furtherconfusion.org/)  
> • [FurScience](https://furscience.com/)  
> • [The Fandom: A Furry Documentary](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iv0QaTW3kEY) [YouTube]


End file.
